Death toll rises to 87 after earthquake in Aegean Sea

Ozan Özgür

The death toll has risen to 87 after a 6.9-magnitude earthquake near the Greek island of Samos in the Aegean Sea hit both the city of Izmir in western Turkey and Samos in Greece on Friday. There were 85 deaths and nearly 1,000 wounded in Turkey, while two people lost their lives and about 20 were injured in Greece after the earthquake also caused a small-scale tsunami near Izmir. This loss of life was preventable and the result of a social crime.

While the Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) claims the quake’s magnitude was 6.6, the United States Geological Survey measured it as 7.0. At least 17 buildings completely collapsed in Izmir, a city of 4.3 million people, and search and rescue work is continuing.

Members of rescue services search in the debris of a collapsed building for survivors in Izmir, Turkey, early Saturday, Oct. 31, 2020. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

Many buildings and roads were damaged in Samos, which is 16 kilometres from the centre of the earthquake. A large part of the island’s Virgin Mary church collapsed. Aftershocks approaching 5 in magnitude continue across the region. Izmir residents therefore could not enter their homes and spent the night in tents set up in the streets and parks.

Moreover, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has only aggravated the plight facing thousands of people in Izmir. Izmir Governor Yavuz Selim Köşger announced on October 25 that the number of cases in the city had doubled in the previous 10 days, killing 15 in just two days. The Turkish Medical Association stated that widespread coronavirus testing should be urgently planned and performed in the affected area.

Turkish and Greek officials, who have pursued a dangerous military confrontation in the eastern Mediterranean over oil and gas resources, threatening to spark a regional war, made hypocritical statements of “solidarity” after the earthquake.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan after the earthquake and wrote on Twitter: “Whatever our differences, these are times when our people need to stand together.” Erdoğan responded, saying: “Turkey, too, is always ready to help Greece heal its wounds.”

After the destruction in Izmir, search and rescue personnel have been joined by working people who have mobilized in solidarity with the earthquake victims. Miners from Soma travelled to Izmir to participate in search and rescue work. This came after they tried to march to Ankara to demand back wages and other benefits owed for years, only to be blocked and attacked by police and gendarmerie forces.

Erdoğan said in Izmir that all the needs of the citizens whose homes were damaged will be met and that new ones will be built by the state. Some of his ministers also spoke, climbing atop wrecked buildings where search and rescue work was still being carried out, pledging aid to earthquake victims. With this, all are trying to hide the government’s crime of negligence on earthquake preparedness since it took power in 2002.

Turkey is an earthquake-prone country, sitting atop two major fault lines as well as fault lines in the Aegean Sea. Scientists have repeatedly called on the government and local administrations to take due precautions, especially after a horrific earthquake in 1999 in the Marmara region killed more than 17,000 and left nearly 250,000 homeless, according to official figures.

There are no serious preparations, however, either for Istanbul or cities in the rest of Turkey. The government has no plan besides calling on people to stay calm. Inevitably, the working class pays the heaviest toll in lives when cheap, vulnerable housing and buildings collapse.

In January, an earthquake of 6.8-magnitude devastated the eastern city of Elazığ: more than 40 died and thousands were injured as a result of this long-anticipated quake.

For decades, Ankara and local governments have made almost no investment in social infrastructure, such as renovating flimsy buildings, planning settlements based on earthquake risk, and preparing for post-earthquake recovery and treatment.

In 2011, Erdoğan’s then-finance minister was asked to account for 46–48 billion Turkish liras (US$8.1 billion) in earthquake taxes collected since 1999. He said the government spent it on double highways, health care and education instead of earthquake preparedness. Erdoğan himself declared in January: “We spent it where it should be spent.”

Bourgeois opposition parties, especially the Republican People’s Party (CHP) that controls city of Izmir, followed the same policies in the municipalities they govern. Throughout this period, local authorities changed cities’ development plans so that construction companies built huge buildings and made billions, but did nothing for earthquake preparedness.

When it emerged that some of the collapsed buildings were already reported to be rotten, the government and the CHP-led local administration blamed each other for earthquake deaths. In fact, the national government and the municipalities have all turned a blind eye to unplanned and uncontrolled construction for decades. This is the principal reason for the loss of life and property in earthquakes.

In particular, an earthquake disaster is approaching in Istanbul, which is home to nearly 16 million people, or almost 20 percent of the Turkish population. Many scientists and experts warn that an expected earthquake of at least 7.2 magnitude in Istanbul could kill hundreds of thousands. Nonetheless, neither the government nor the CHP-led municipal administration has taken any serious measures.

Natural disasters, hurricanes, floods and earthquakes worldwide, and global pandemics such as COVID-19, mainly hit the working class, which constitutes the vast majority of society, along with poorer sections of the middle classes. On the other hand, a tiny privileged elite of billionaires and multimillionaires wallow in wealth and live in castle-like homes.

Prof. Övgün Ahmet, a seismologist, underscored this after the earthquake near Izmir, stating: “The higher the poverty, the closer the earthquake is to you. You have not heard, and you will not hear, about rich people being pulled from the wreckage. The main problem is poverty.”

The preventable deaths and destruction after the earthquake in the Aegean Sea have made clear once again that capitalism and establishment parties that defend it are the major obstacle to building a world in which masses of people can live without fear of the impact of natural disasters.

New Zealand Green Party joins right-wing Labour government

Tom Peters

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday announced the ministerial positions in her government, more than a fortnight after the Labour Party was returned to office in the national election with 49.1 percent of the votes.

The delay in announcing the government is extraordinary, given that Labour has at least 64 of the 120 seats in parliament. Despite this majority allowing it to govern alone, Labour spent two weeks negotiating a “cooperation agreement” with the Green Party, which gained 7.6 percent of the votes, giving it 10 seats in parliament.

Green Party co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson with PM Jacinda Ardern and Labour Party deputy leader Kelvin Davis. (Source: NZ Labour Party Facebook page)

The main opposition National Party suffered its second-worst defeat ever, with many of its wealthy and upper middle class supporters switching their votes to Labour. National has been systematically destabilised for years because its advocacy of stronger business links with China is opposed by New Zealand’s ally, the United States.

The Greens were part of the 2017-2020 Labour-led coalition government, which also included the right-wing nationalist and anti-Chinese NZ First Party. NZ First did not get enough votes to re-enter parliament.

Ardern told the media that the deal “commits the Greens to supporting the government in confidence and supply votes and supporting the government on procedural motions. This has the effect of strengthening the government’s stability and will ensure there is always a strong majority in parliament on the most important votes. As we accelerate our recovery from COVID, strong, stable government is essential to New Zealand.”

As these comments indicate, the Labour-Greens agreement points to considerable nervousness in the ruling establishment about political instability due to the economic and social crisis triggered by the pandemic. In country after country, workers are striking and protesting against unsafe working conditions, historic attacks on jobs and living standards, police brutality and other anti-democratic measures.

The Ardern government’s pro-business policies will shatter illusions in Labour and bring about a resurgence of working class struggle. Although New Zealand has not suffered mass deaths from COVID-19, the government seized on the pandemic as a pretext to give tens of billions of dollars to the corporate and financial elite, while major companies sacked tens of thousands of workers.

Billions of dollars are also being given to the military to deepen its integration into US plans for war against Russia, China, and other countries—a spending program fully supported by the Greens.

The Greens’ role is to provide a “progressive” veneer for a pro-business and pro-war government. Underscoring Labour’s determination to bring the Greens into the government, Ardern released the text of the cooperation agreement publicly on Saturday before Green Party delegates had decided whether to accept it. Shortly afterwards, 114 out of 136 delegates voted in favour of the deal and co-leader Marama Davidson declared the party was “thrilled” to be in government.

The new agreement, like the last one, is not a formal coalition, but the difference is largely semantic. The Greens’ co-leaders have been given ministerial positions outside of cabinet: James Shaw will continue as minister of climate change and has an additional role as associate minister for the environment; Davidson picks up the new position of minister for the prevention of family and sexual violence and will also be the associate housing minister, with particular responsibility for homelessness.

The agreement identifies areas of cooperation including environmental issues and “improving child wellbeing and marginalised communities through action on homelessness, warmer homes, and child and youth mental health.” Davidson will join a ministerial group to discuss a “Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy.” Ardern retains for herself the role of “Minister for Child Poverty Reduction.”

There are no actual policies to address the social crisis, which has dramatically worsened over the past three years. Ardern rejected Green Party proposals for a small wealth tax to fund increased welfare benefits. Median incomes have plummeted by at least 7.6 percent this year alone, with almost 12 percent of working age people now on welfare. Nearly one in four children still live in poverty and the situation is getting worse, despite Ardern’s false claims during the election campaign.

Homelessness, for which the Greens are being given responsibility, is deeply entrenched. House prices soared by 27 percent in the last three years, median rents have gone up 12.5 percent and the waiting list for public housing has more than trebled to over 20,000 families. The government’s flagship “KiwiBuild” policy in 2017, which promised to create 100,000 “affordable” houses was dumped by Ardern in 2019 with fewer than 500, or .5 percent of the promised total, actually constructed.

The utterly bogus nature of the much vaunted policy was exposed by the fact that all the 500 houses were sold at market rates, placing them out of reach for those who needed them most.

Some Green Party supporters in liberal and pseudo-left circles have expressed concern about the cooperation deal. Former Green MP Sue Bradford said the party would be “an ineffectual lapdog of Labour.” Former Green leader Russel Norman, who heads Greenpeace NZ, said the party would be “effectively gagged, so they can't set the agenda on many issues but particularly core issues like climate change.” The Greens-backed “zero carbon” legislation, touted as its major achievement in the last three years, does nothing to enforce meaningful emissions reductions.

The trade union funded Daily Blog—which fraudulently promoted Labour and the Greens as “left wing” during the election—said the “cooperation agreement” would make the Greens “look complicit in Labour’s tepid progress.” These commentators, speaking for layers of the upper middle class, are concerned that the Greens will no longer be able to pose as a “left” alternative, in order to channel rising anger over social inequality and climate change back into support for the capitalist parliamentary system.

Alongside the deal with the Greens, Ardern’s other ministerial appointments, several of which came as a surprise, show an effort to cloak her government’s reactionary agenda by using the politics of racial and gender identity. The media has hailed the “incredible diversity” of her 20-member cabinet, which includes eight women and five Maori ministers.

Poto Williams, who previously had the minor role of community and voluntary sector minister, has replaced Stuart Nash as police minister. Ardern responded to protests in New Zealand following the murder of George Floyd in the US by falsely claiming that police brutality, which is directed against working class people, can be addressed by appointing Maori to leading positions.

Maori politicians Nanaia Mahuta and Peeni Henare are the new foreign affairs and defence ministers, replacing NZ First leader Winston Peters and co-leader Ron Mark. The media is glorifying Mahuta as the country’s first female foreign minister. Both will continue to strengthen New Zealand’s alliance with the US, and NZ imperialism’s domination over Pacific countries like Tonga and Samoa.

The appointment of Henare is likely bound up with efforts to recruit Maori youth into the military. Henare boasted that his grandfather Sir James Henare was a commander of the Maori Battalion in World War II, which was glorified with a new museum opened earlier this year.

The corporate media is hailing finance minister Grant Robertson’s promotion to deputy prime minister, as first openly gay person to get the job. In fact, his appointment sends a clear signal of the government’s right-wing agenda. Robertson led the economic response to the pandemic, including the multi-billion dollar subsidies, tax concessions and handouts to business. He played a key role during the election campaign, appearing in social media advertisements appealing for support from the conservative National Party constituency by presenting Labour as the more stable capitalist party.

Mass protests against anti-abortion law in Poland develop into a revolt against government

Martin Nowak

Protests against the tightening of abortion restrictions in Poland have intensified further in the past week and are developing into a revolt against the PiS government.

In opinion polls, almost two-thirds of the population support the protests. Three-quarters of respondents rejected the decision of the Constitutional Court to further limit the right to abortion.

Protest against abortion law in Wroclaw on 26 October (Photo: Evidamii019 / Wikimedia)

Every day, there are new protests. Last Wednesday, according to police reports, 430,000 took to the streets throughout the country for a “general strike by women.” There are no reliable figures about how many stayed away from work. During the day, it was mainly schoolchildren and students who took part in the demonstrations; but there were many spontaneous expressions of solidarity. In some places, protest slogans were posted on public transport notice boards. Road traffic was blocked in many places. The protests continued to grow throughout the afternoon.

The Polish ruling class has reacted to the protests with violence and repression. The new Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek (Law and Justice Party, PiS) is particularly prominent in this regard. When he was appointed on October 19, he was already confronted with protests by students demanding better protection from the coronavirus, protests that have now seamlessly merged into the broader movement.

Czarnek has threatened all schools and universities with cuts in funding if they allow students to participate in the protests. Among others, the rectors of the universities of Wroclaw and Gdansk had cancelled classes to enable student participation in the protests. The Catholic University of Lublin, on the other hand, has threatened students and censored posts on its Facebook page that advocated the protests.

The education minister is leading a veritable crusade against the protesters. He declared that women should not be dissuaded by “neo-Marxists and feminists” from their God-given role as housewives and mothers. Czarnek described the participants in the demonstration as “radical left-wing revolutionaries,” some of whom were shouting “Satanist” slogans and for whom “there can be no place” in Poland.

Czarnek announced that he would have “all textbooks—especially those in Polish, history and social studies” checked for their Polish-patriotic content. His attack on the alleged “cult of guilt in the classroom” indicates the historical-revisionist and fascist direction this new orientation in textbooks is to take. As voivode (chief of the district administration) of Lublin, Czarnek had openly collaborated with the fascist ONR (National Radical Camp).

On October 27, the ONR announced a new initiative to create paramilitary associations. These “National Brigades” are to protect “Polish society, religious sites and patriotic events from militant attacks and provocations by neo-Marxists, an embodiment of Bolshevism.” They have openly announced a “systematic training in martial arts, weight training, shooting and other disciplines.”

Even if the ONR itself denies it, this initiative follows on from the statement of PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński the same day. The éminence grise of the PiS has called the demonstrators criminals and declared it a civic duty to resist them.

“We must defend ourselves,” Kaczyński said. “We must defend Polish churches. At all costs. I call upon all members of the Law and Justice Party and our supporters to defend the churches.” The Church’s system of values was the only moral system that Poles know, he said.

More than 130,000 negative reactions on the PiS Facebook page show the enormous contempt for his reactionary position. Almost 50,000 users agreed with a comment calling for “the dictator” and his government to resign.

Kaczyński wore the “Kotwica,” the symbol of Polish resistance during the Second World War, during his speech. In doing so, he underscored the extreme right-wing narrative placing the PiS measures in a historical line with the Polish struggle against National Socialism (Nazism) and Communism. State broadcaster TVP-Info, which conforms to the line of the PiS, also called the demonstrators “left-wing fascism on the rise.”

Given its cold, stoic nature, Kaczyński’s speech was repeatedly compared with the speech in which General Wojciech Jaruzelski announced the introduction of martial law in 1981. Even then, state and church were intricately linked, and they still are today. The speaker of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, Leszek Gęsiak, has declared participation in the protests against the abortion restrictions to be a sin.

Father Tadeusz Rydzyk also plays an important role in this. The priest and founder of Radio Maryja is notorious for his anti-Semitic and clerico-fascist views. His radio station, which has supported the policies of the PiS for years, condemned the protests as “satanic aggression.”

The ONR and the All-Polish Youth followed Kaczyński’s call to arms. They posted their “political soldiers” in front of churches all over the country and took action against demonstrators. Throughout Wednesday evening, there were attacks on demonstrators in Wroclaw by right-wing extremist thugs from the football hooligan scene. According to unanimous reports from demonstrators, the police mostly did not intervene against the fascist thugs.

Two journalists from Wyborcza were also attacked and injured. Wyborzca reported shortly afterwards that the thug was only arrested temporarily. He was released and the arrest warrant revoked on the initiative of Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, who is also chief prosecutor. It is not the first time that the state has held its protective hand over right-wing extremist thugs, as Wyborzca notes.

Typical for the reactionary agitation PiS defenders spread in the media is also a statement by the deputy head of the Ministry of Defence, Marcin Ociepa. He asked, how was it that young girls were taking to the streets to protest so aggressively. “I think something is wrong here. I think it is worth investigating this phenomenon. Someone is behind it.” The language, and hints of conspiracies involving dubious backers, follow an anti-Semitic trope.

On Friday, the protests reached a new peak. In Warsaw alone, at least one hundred thousand took part, and another hundred thousand throughout the country. While the huge crowds remained peaceful, there were again massive attacks by right-wing extremist groups.

As can be seen on video recordings, the fascists wore white armbands, a distinguishing mark that was used by extreme right-wing paramilitaries like the German Freikorps a hundred years ago. The police remained largely inactive or were not even on-site, since large detachments together with the military police were sent to guard government buildings and churches as well as Kaczynski’s residence.

The demonstrators not only confront the attacks of PiS and extreme right-wing organisations. This is shown by an interview with the former president of the Constitutional Court, Andrzej Rzepliński. He condemned the demonstrators as a mob and hooligans and said that they disgusted him.

Rzepliński had been elected to office with the majority of the current opposition, Civic Platform (PO). Many editorials point out that Poland’s reactionary abortion legislation, the so-called 1993 Compromise, was the work of all parties and was not liberalised even during the PO’s several years in power.

Nevertheless, the leaders of “women’s strikes,” such as Marta Lempart, and the entire Left Bloc are sowing illusions in the PO. The left-wing Razem party and Wiosna (Spring), founded in 2019, are nominally to the left of the PO, but beyond their radical phrases, they do not advocate an independent programme that would show a way out of the downward spiral of the bankrupt capitalist system.

Replacing the PiS government with a PO-led government would not solve any problems for the Polish working class. The close intertwining of the Catholic Church, fascist militias, the state, the media, and establishment parties, all of which emerged from the swamp of capitalist restoration in the 1990s, will not disappear with a change of government.

The PiS came to power in the first place because it was able to exploit dissatisfaction with the right-wing policies of PO and, before that, the social-democratic PSL. To tie the protests to this discredited and untrustworthy opposition, a “consultative council” was formed in Warsaw on Sunday. This body is oriented toward the opposition in neighbouring Belarus and is explicitly intended to use the experience of the “democratic opposition from the time of the [Soviet era] Polish People’s Republic”—i.e., the Stalinist political forces from which both the PiS and the PO emerged.

A similar appeal was made by the chairman of the Polish Senate, Tomasz Grodzki (PO). Speaking to Wyborzca, he urged the government to begin talks with the parliamentary and non-parliamentary opposition.

Faced with the escalating coronavirus crisis, the opposition parties have no answer that does justice to the urgency of the situation. On Thursday, the number of new infections in Poland exceeded the 20,000 mark for the first time, and it exceeded 21,800 on Saturday. On Friday, the number of deaths reached a new daily record of 298.

Given the dynamics of the pandemic, a collapse of the already ailing Polish health care system is inevitable, experts warn. The government’s plan to build an additional 10,000 beds in field hospitals will not change anything given the chronic shortage of personnel, equipment and materials.

The only new measure that the government has implemented in response to the exponentially growing case count was the closure of cemeteries before the upcoming All Saints Day holiday. The opposition also demanded the closure of churches.

None of these measures will bring the pandemic under control. As already demanded by the protesting students, normal operations in schools, day-care centres and universities must be stopped immediately. The economy would have to be reduced to what was absolutely necessary, and extensive funds would have to be made available for the health system.

However, this would jeopardise the profits of the corporations and the rich, which continue to flow copiously. For example, three weeks ago, e-commerce website Allegro was launched on the Warsaw Stock Exchange with record proceeds of €2 billion and immediately became the most valuable company in Poland.

The fear of Poland’s ruling class is directed at the mass social protests that the tightening of the abortion laws has ignited like a spark. What is driving people onto the streets is by no means just the demand to withdraw the ban on abortions. The protests are articulating all the pent-up anger against the social and economic system that is currently led by the PiS but supported and defended by all parties. Therefore, the push for a legislative compromise by President Duda on Friday was completely futile—that abortions would be legal if the mother could prove she would suffer a stillbirth.

Meanwhile, rumours about the imminent imposition of a state of emergency are growing. For example, in Wyborzca, former director of the government security centre and former deputy interior minister Antoni Podolski cited historical examples to show three possible scenarios linked to former Polish premiers: “Gierek—talk to the demonstrators and abandon violence. Jaruzelski—introduce a state of emergency and quell the protests with violence. And finally, the Gomulka variant—the leaders of the leader, concerned about his progressive loss of any sense of reality, conclude that it is time to replace him to save their power.”

As millions vote against him, Trump pushes violence and suppression of votes

Patrick Martin

As voter turnout passes 100 million in the United States, with tens of millions more going to the polls Tuesday, President Donald Trump is stepping up his preparations to defy the popular will and stay in office. Trailing in the polls, and with his latest legal challenges to the casting and counting of ballots having been thrown out by the courts, Trump is turning to the open instigation of violence.

More than 98 million people had cast ballots by Monday night. In 2016, when Trump won a narrow Electoral College victory over Hillary Clinton despite losing the popular vote, there were 138 million votes cast. This year’s turnout could reach or eclipse 160 million.

If the polls of those who have voted already are accurate, it is likely that Trump goes into Election Day trailing former Vice President Joe Biden by as many as 25 million votes. He would need to win the same-day, in-person vote by an overwhelming margin to gain reelection.

San Francisco Department of Elections worker Rosy Chan checks for damaged ballots at a voting center in San Francisco, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

If the voting trend continues—and if the votes are counted fairly rather than suppressed—the result would be a political rout of Trump and the Republicans. This can only be understood as an expression of overwhelming popular anger against the Trump administration, both for its outrageous refusal to fight the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 235,000 people in America and for its intensifying threats against democratic rights

These popular sentiments were foreshadowed in the mass protests that broke out across the United States, in virtually every city and town, in response to the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis last May. These sentiments appear to be rising to the surface again in a massive repudiation of the Trump administration and its ultra-right policies.

The voter turnout in itself represents an initial shift in political consciousness among millions of working people and young people. A few figures illustrate the demographics of the election:

• In 2016, some 8.9 million people voted in Texas, long ruled by the Republican Party, and Trump won by 800,000 votes. In 2020, more than 9 million people have already cast early votes or voted by mail, with millions more expected at the polls Tuesday. The largest increases in voter turnout are in the major cities, and the state is now considered to be closely contested.
• In 2016, 4.1 million people voted in Georgia, a traditionally Republican state that Trump carried easily. In 2020 early voting alone, 3.8 million people have already voted, with the heaviest turnout in the Atlanta metropolitan area, and the state is considered a toss-up.
• In North Carolina, early voting and mail-in ballots combined have already surpassed the total of 4.5 million who voted in 2016. The highest voter turnouts are in the cities of Raleigh, Durham and Charlotte, and the youth vote is sharply higher than in 2016, when Trump carried the state by a margin of about 3 percent.
• A study by Tufts University found that 7 million young people have already voted and that youth were a higher percentage of voters in 13 of 14 “battleground” states, as compared to 2016. The largest increases in youth turnout were in a band of states across the South: Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Texas.

If the Democratic Party and Biden come to power as a result of the election, they will be the completely undeserving beneficiaries of a popular repudiation of Trump and his fascistic policies, including ongoing efforts to stage a political coup against the election itself. Biden has offered no program to address the needs of working people and, like Trump, defends the interests of corporate America and its military-intelligence apparatus.

The response by Trump and the Republicans to the flood of voters to the polls has been to intensify legal actions to delay the counting of mail ballots—so Trump can issue a bogus claim of victory on the basis of in-person voting only—or to suppress early votes entirely, as a lawsuit filed in Houston, Texas, sought to do.

The Texas lawsuit challenged the validity of 127,000 votes cast by residents of Harris County (Houston) who used a drive-through voting facility offered by the county because of coronavirus fears. The ballots constituted more than 10 percent of all the early votes cast in Harris County, which is heavily Democratic.

The legal arguments put forward by the Republicans—three candidates and a longtime party activist—were openly anti-democratic. They claimed that it was illegal and unconstitutional for the local government to offer citizens safer ways to vote during the pandemic, and they demanded that the courts throw out the ballots on the eve of the election, effectively disenfranchising 127,000 people. They cited the notorious 2000 Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore as a precedent for federal intervention in a state election dispute . After the Texas Supreme Court, whose every judge was nominated by a Republican governor, denied the request, the plaintiffs switched to a federal court. An ultra-right Republican judge, Andrew Hanen, appointed by George W. Bush, ruled that the plaintiffs had no standing to sue and could not show they had suffered damage from people casting ballots. He also noted that the drive-through process had been announced during the summer, but the lawsuit arrived in his courtroom only the day before the election. He added that the remedy sought, suppression of the votes, was far too drastic.

The Trump campaign lost a second major case in a battleground state when a Nevada judge denied its motion to halt counting of mail ballots in Clark County, Nevada, which includes Las Vegas, pending litigation on the exact procedures to be followed in storing, opening and counting ballots. The transparent purpose of the lawsuit was to slow the count of mail-in ballots, thought to favor Biden and the Democrats, and allow Trump to claim “victory” in Nevada on the basis of the in-person votes only. Clark County accounts for two-thirds of the votes cast in Nevada elections.

The more Trump sees voters surge to the polls, and the less success he has in the courts, the more he is encouraging his fascistic supporters to engage in intimidation and outright violence in an effort to block an honest count of the votes and stalemate the declaration of a winner. The aim is to allow Republican-controlled state legislatures to intervene in key states and select a pro-Trump slate of electors, regardless the popular vote in the state. Trump is no doubt also considering using the US military to put down protests against his attempt to steal the election.

Speaking Monday in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Trump condemned the state government’s extension of the deadline for receiving mail ballots postmarked by November 3. “They made a very dangerous situation, and I mean dangerous, physically dangerous, and they made it a very, very bad, they did a very bad thing for this state,” he threatened. Referring to Democratic Governor Tom Wolf, he warned: “Please don’t cheat, because we’re all watching. We’re all watching you, governor.”

Earlier on Monday, he condemned a US Supreme Court ruling effectively upholding the deadline extension in Pennsylvania, tweeting: “The Supreme Court decision on voting in Pennsylvania is a VERY dangerous one. It will allow rampant and unchecked cheating and will undermine our entire systems of laws. It will also induce violence in the streets. Something must be done!”

From whom will the “physical danger” and “violence in the streets” come? Who are the potential victims? This is a clear effort by Trump to intimidate state officials, using the threat of right-wing violence along the lines of the plots already uncovered in Michigan, Virginia and other states, where fascist militias have targeted Democratic governors and others deemed insufficiently loyal to the would-be dictator in the White House.

In anticipation of widespread popular unrest against a Trump coup attempt, a number of state governors, both Republican and Democratic, have mobilized the National Guard. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, an anti-Trump Republican, alerted 1,000 troops for potential duty in urban areas across the state. Oregon Governor Christine Brown declared a state of emergency for the Portland area from Monday through Wednesday and mobilized an unspecified number of National Guard troops. A unit of the Illinois National Guard was deployed to Chicago in a convoy of Humvees, at the orders of Democratic Governor J. B. Pritzker.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has already mobilized 1,000 National Guard troops for deployment in five major cities—Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio—citing the danger of mass protests on the scale of those that followed the police murder of George Floyd in May.

The atmosphere of foreboding in official Washington on the eve of the election was expressed in the headline of an article posted by the Atlantic magazine: “How Trump Could Attempt a Coup.” While former Vice President Biden has publicly dismissed the danger of Trump seeking to steal the election or defy its outcome, the Atlantic article reveals that the Biden campaign has carried out “a massive planning exercise for rapid responses to dozens of scenarios in which Trump tries to interfere with the normal functioning of the election.”

These responses are supposedly limited to “pre-drafted emergency motions in state or federal court.” The article goes on to say that “The campaign will be ready on an hour’s notice to file for a temporary restraining order in any case it has thus far been able to anticipate.”

The Atlantic discusses Trump’s possible use of federal agents and paramilitary forces, or even the regular military, but does not report on any discussions between the Biden campaign and the Pentagon, which are undoubtedly taking place.

US mercenary exposes Trump administration links to abortive Venezuela invasion

Bill Van Auken

Senior Trump administration officials were in on the planning of and offered assistance to the abortive May 3, 2020, invasion of Venezuela carried out by a mercenary band that included at least two former US special forces operatives, according to a lawsuit filed in Miami, Florida, last Friday.

The conspiracy to carry out the illegal invasion was hatched, at least in part, at the Trump Hotel in Washington D.C. and at a Trump golf course in Florida, and was facilitated by individuals with close ties to the US president and Vice President Mike Pence.

The invasion, referred to as the “Bay of Piglets” due to its resemblance to the debacle suffered by the 1961 CIA-organized invasion of Cuba—albeit on a far smaller scale—ended with the capture of the two American ex-soldiers, Luke Denman and Airan Berry, along with 45 Venezuelan mercenaries. At least six others were killed in a separate landing on Venezuela’s northern Caribbean coast. Denman and Berry were sentenced by Venezuelan authorities to 20 years in prison on conspiracy and terrorism charges.

US mercenaries Airan Berry (circled at top) and Luke Denman (bottom) after being captured in Venezuela.

The $1.4 million breach of contract lawsuit has been brought by Jordan Goudreau, a former Green Beret who heads the Florida-based security contractor Silvercorp USA that organized the failed landing, against J.J. Rendón. A multi-millionaire political consultant who has assisted right-wing campaigns across Latin America, Rendón had been tapped by the US-backed puppet, self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó, to form a “strategic committee” to develop plans for the overthrow of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Rendón was dismissed from this post shortly after the failure of the invasion and the publication of a “General Services Agreement” he had signed with Goudreau. With his lawsuit and in an exclusive interview with the Miami Herald and its parent company McClatchy, Goudreau has brought to light portions of this agreement that had previously been concealed.

An addendum spells out the purpose of the operation, vaguely referred to in the agreement as providing assistance in procurement, logistics and “project execution and advisement.” The addendum states clearly that Silvercorp would “advise and assist … in planning and executing an operation to capture/detain/remove Nicolás Maduro (hereafter, ‘Primary Objective’), remove current regime, and install recognized Venezuelan President Juan Guaidó.”

As the captured American mercenaries acknowledged, the plan had been for the landing parties to drive to Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, seize the airport and then kidnap Maduro and bundle him onto an aircraft bound for the US.

An additional previously unknown clause stipulates that in the event of the kind of fiasco that transpired, Guaidó would be free to wash his hands of the entire affair. “If for any reason Project Resolute Operation does not succeed, President Guaidó will maintain deniability and be absolved from all knowledge and fault by all parties,” it states.

This is precisely what he did. While Guaidó’s signature appeared on the contract (he claimed it was forged) and a recording was released in which the US-backed “interim president” spoke with Goudreau, rging him on in the operation, Guaidó insisted he knew nothing about it.

Gourdreau’s lawsuit names Andrew Horn, a former aide to Vice President Pence, and Jason Beardsley, an ex-Green Beret who is an advisor to the Department of Veterans Affairs, as the two US officials who discussed the invasion plot with him. He said that Horn had assured him that “licenses from the United States Government regarding the procurement of weapons and armament for the project were forthcoming.”

A spokesman for Pence issued a statement claiming the Vice President “has absolutely no knowledge of the rogue plot in Venezuela and does not know Mr. Horn,” who is reported to have worked as an intern for then-Representative Pence in 2003. Following the failed invasion plot, Horn left the vice president’s office to work for the National Security Council.

Another reported link between Pence and the plot flowed through Roen Kraft, heir to the Kraft Food fortune. The lawsuit states that Kraft, who had pledged to raise private funds for the coup plot, told Goudreau in August 2019 that he had spoken to Pence about it and the Vice President “stated that he was very interested in the project and that as soon as it was successful, ‘all doors would be open.’”

Named as having facilitated connections between Silvercorp, Guaidó and US government officials are Nestor Sainz, a former US State Department official, and Travis Lucas, a lobbyist and lawyer who represented Trump’s former bodyguard and director of the Oval Office Keith Schiller in 2017, when Schiller appeared as a witness before the House Intelligence Committee as part of its “Russiagate” inquiry. Goudreau said that it was Lucas who introduced him to the two government officials. He showed the Herald invoices demonstrating that Lucas had billed the military contractor $30,000 for legal advice on foreign lobbying and arms exports.

The lawsuit also states that a rival bid for the Venezuelan invasion-coup operation had been tendered by Erik Prince, whose Frontier Services Group is a successor to the infamous Blackwater security firm involved in war crimes in Iraq. Prince’s plan reportedly would have cost $500 million—more than twice as much as the Silvercorp contract—and involved an invasion force of 5,000 mercenaries. Prince is the brother of Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Prince’s lawyer Matthew Schwartz denied that he had submitted the proposal, the Herald reported, but added that “he does believe strongly that any action taken in Venezuela must be swift and decisive to avoid a protracted civil war.”

The vast sums being discussed to pay for the mercenary operations were to come out of the oil revenues stolen from Venezuela under the US “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign.

This week the Trump administration has ratcheted up these sanctions significantly, lifting a humanitarian exemption that had previously been maintained for swaps of Venezuelan crude oil for diesel needed to fuel power plants and trucks used to transport the country’s food supplies. International energy firms like Spain’s Repsol, Italy’s Eni and India’s Reliance that had engaged in the swaps will now be open to secondary sanctions unless they halt the deals. A broad range of NGOs had urged the Trump administration not to proceed with the escalation, warning that it would lead to increased hunger, disease and death.

The homicidal escalation of Washington’s attacks on the Venezuelan people is driven by the abject failure of its attempts to foment a popular uprising or even a military coup in support of its puppet Guaidó, whose support in the country has dwindled to insignificance. At the same time, the Trump administration is pursuing a policy of maximum aggression in an attempt to curry favor with right-wing Cuban exiles in Florida, a core Republican base in the 2020 presidential election.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, meanwhile, took pains to rebut Republican charges that he was “soft” on Maduro. The Biden campaign insisted that, as far as Biden was concerned, “there’s nothing for us to talk about” with the Venezuelan president. It also pointed out that Biden was the first candidate running in the Democratic primaries to support Trump’s recognition of the puppet Guaidó as Venezuela’s “legitimate” president. Under the Obama-Biden administration, the US government declared that Venezuela posed a threat to the US tantamount to a “national emergency,” justifying draconian sanctions.

Underlying this bipartisan policy is the drive by US imperialism to reassert control over Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest on the planet, and to deny access to these resources to its rivals, in particular China.

Amid the new revelations about the invasion-coup plot and escalating threats from both major parties, Cilia Flores, the former president of Venezuela’s National Assembly and its former attorney general, who is married to President Maduro, gave an interview in which she insisted that “at any moment, I don’t know, it could be sooner rather than later, there can be a rapprochement” between the US and Venezuela.

She continued, “Here in Venezuela, there are US companies that have interests, they have experience, they have been partners of PdVSA (Venezuela’s state-run oil company), they can keep working,” she said. She added that the US economic blockade had “not only affected Venezuela … but it has also prejudiced US citizens who … came to Venezuela to invest and to earn and they made them lose.”

Flores went on to praise the recently approved “anti-blockade law,” which critics charge is paving the way for PdVSA’s privatization, saying that it “sparked a lot of interest among international investors.” The law she said, served to reassure even those “who believe they are the owners of the world” that there is “no type of risk” in investing in Venezuela.

Representing the interests of a section of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, the Maduro government is seeking to counter the country’s deepening crisis with a further turn to the right and a rapprochement with US imperialism. It is carrying out repression against the resistance of workers and the impoverished masses to deepening austerity, while pardoning and seeking an accommodation with its right-wing opposition.

The struggle to defend Venezuela from imperialist aggression and the conditions and rights of the working masses from the relentless attacks of the government and the capitalist ruling class it represents can be carried out only by means of the independent struggle of the Venezuelan working class, united with that of workers throughout the hemisphere, in a common fight for socialism.

Spain’s PSOE-Podemos government rejects calls for shelter-at-home policy

Alejandro López

Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government is rejecting regional authorities’ requests to impose a shelter-at-home order. In the absence of a COVID-19 vaccine, this is the only policy to bring the virus under control and avert a horrific loss of life amid a devastating resurgence of the virus. This decision underscores the political criminality of the Spanish government and, in particular, of the “left populist” Podemos party, which is keeping workers at work and children at school so that massive profits can continue accruing to the banks and major investors.

Spain is one of the hardest hit countries in Europe, with a total of 35,878 deaths and 1,264,517 infections, although deaths could be as many as 60,000 and infections around 3 million. It has added 7,100 COVID-19 fatalities to the official death toll since July. If the rate does not slow, Spain will have another 8,000 more COVID-19 fatalities by Christmas. Yesterday, the Ministry of Health reported 55,019 new cases over the weekend.

The virus is spreading rapidly, particularly in schools. Nearly 6,000 classrooms had to close because of COVID-19 cases in October, up from the 3,850 in September. In total, 159 schools have closed and 1,578 teachers have been infected, according to the Education Workers Union.

In this context, the northern region of Asturias asked the central PSOE-Podemos government to authorize a 15-day shelter-at-home in a bid to contain the contagion.

At a press conference held after an urgent meeting of the region’s COVID-19 Crisis Committee, Asturian regional premier Adrián Barbón said that the region was struggling to contain the virus. Asturias has already seen more than 400 infections per 100,000 inhabitants, and its hospitals and intensive care units (ICUs) are on the verge of collapse. On each of the last eight days of October, the region saw more than 3,000 infections.

Barbón said the committee is worried at “the growth in hospitalizations. If we continue at this rate and we not be able to control the spread or hospitalizations, we could reach a limit situation.”

Barbón’s urgent call exposes the central government’s pretensions that limited measures like midnight-6:00 a.m. curfews, limiting meetings to six people and closing bars and hotels, while allowing non-essential work and forcing children back to school, would contain the virus.

In a matter of a few hours, however, the PSOE-Podemos government dismissed calls for a shelter-at-home policy. Health Minister Salvador Illa said: “Now we do not foresee it. We are not working on it, nor do we foresee it. We think that with the range of measures that are available to the authorities of the regional governments are enough.”

Government sources told Spanish public television channel RTVE: “What is proposed is what is approved, and there are no other proposals.”

Even as a record number of 25,595 new cases were confirmed on Friday, Illa cynically told the Spanish population to wait and see whether his government’s limited measures had any impact on the pandemic: “When you implement measures, they can take between 10 to 15 days to see the results. Therefore, we must have patience and know how to wait long enough to be able to see the effects of very drastic measures, and not enter into a kind of competition to see who takes the toughest measure.”

After Asturias, Spain’s African enclave, Melilla, also requested a shelter-at-home policy. On Sunday night, the enclave formally requested the central government assess shelter-at-home policy and suspend face-to-face teaching.

Last week, the health chief of Castilla y León, asked the central government for the legal tools required to apply shelter-at-home if there was no improvement in the region’s epidemiological data. Other Spanish regions, including Catalonia and Andalusia, are also debating such requests.

Meanwhile, scientists are demanding the immediate implementation of the a shelter-at-home policy. Tomás Cobo, the vice president of the Collegiate Medical Organization told El País last week that “Confinement is the only measure that is scientifically proven,” adding: “the rest [of the measures implemented to date] are just trial and error.”

José Martínez Olmos, the former general secretary of the Health Ministry and a professor at the Andalusian School of Public Health, told the same daily: “It will be difficult to avoid confinement with these figures we have in the regions.”

The only way forward is an independent mobilisation of the European and international working class. It was the independent intervention of the workers that compelled the adoption of lock-down policies this spring in Europe, with wildcat strikes at auto plants, steel, engineering and food processing plants shutting down supply chains and forcing EU governments to adopt shelter-at-home orders. The working class’ intervention saved millions of lives.

Today, there is no question that the closure of non-essential businesses, combined with massive investments in public health, testing, quarantining and contact tracing are the only scientific policy to combat the virus. To implement such a programme, however, requires the working class to turn to a conscious international struggle for socialism.

This requires a political struggle against the PSOE-Podemos government. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Podemos has helped implement a rapid return to work of non-essential workers and the reopening of schools, all while maintaining a complicit silence on the government’s failure to hire thousands of contact tracers and medical personnel needed to deal with a widely-expected resurgence of COVID-19.

While the regional affiliate of Podemos in Asturias filed the demand for the PSOE-controlled region to implement a shelter-at-home policy, this simply underscores the reactionary role of Podemos at the national level. Pablo Iglesias—the general secretary of Podemos who is now Spain’s deputy prime minister and a member of the oversight board of its National Intelligence Centre—has maintained a deafening silence on the pandemic. This is another example of “full loyalty” on all state questions Iglesias promised the PSOE when he went into government with it last year.

As for the trade union bureaucracy, they remained completely silent in the hopes that a share of the billions in bailout funds will pass into their union coffers. The larger trade unions—Workers Commissions (CC.OO, affiliated to Podemos) and the General Labour Union (UGT, affiliated to the PSOE)—who acted as the chief enforcers of back-to-work policy since spring, have not made any statements. The General Confederation of Labour (CGT), which at times postures as the alternative “radical” union has also remained silent.

The European sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International are calling on workers and youth to organise safety committees in workplaces and schools, independently of the unions. This would lay the basis for mass, coordinated strike actions, systematic opposition and the taking of power by the working class to impound the necessary resources for a scientific and humane fight against COVID-19 and put an end to the bourgeoisie’s herd immunity policy.

Duterte administration launches “red-tagging” witchhunt

John Malvar

The administration of fascistic Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte over the past month dramatically escalated its political attacks on activists and dissidents, “red-tagging” them without presenting any evidence as to their being members of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). The CPP and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), have been deemed “terrorist organizations” by the Duterte administration.

At the center of the spree of red-tagging is the government National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and one of its most vocal members, Lt. Gen Antonio Parlade.

Over the past several weeks, Parlade has issued statements denouncing various mass organizations as “terrorist groups” for their alleged ties to the CPP. On this basis, he has denounced members of the House of Representatives, trade union leaders, movie stars, and a beauty queen as part of this terrorist network, publicly threatening them not only with prosecution but with the possibility of extrajudicial killing.

President Duterte talks to Philippine Army troops (Credit: Presidential Communications Operations Office)

When 22-year old television star, Liza Soberano, participated in an online seminar hosted by women’s rights organization Gabriela, Parlade published a statement addressed to her, warning her that “there’s still a chance to abdicate that group. If you don’t, you will suffer the same fate as Josephine Anne Lapira.” Lapira was shot dead by the military as a member of the NPA in 2017.

Parlade issued similar public threats to movie actress Angel Locsin and to Miss Universe 2018, Catriona Gray.

As a result of the celebrity status of his targets, Parlade’s red-tagging spree became the subject of national news, and mass opposition quickly took shape online denouncing the baseless charges and vulgar threats of Parlade. He was after all accusing Miss Universe of being a terrorist. The Duterte administration was compelled to distance itself from Parlade and Parlade eventually issued a partial apology.

While the attacks on these celebrities were overreach on the part of Parlade, the NTF-ELCAC has been engaged in a systematic campaign of red-tagging against grass-roots level activists throughout the country. The power of the anti-Communist taskforce enormously increased on July 3, with the passage of the Anti-Terrorism Act.

The Anti-Terrorism Act, which received overwhelming support in both houses of the legislature, granted the Duterte administration sweeping police state powers. It authorized warrantless wiretapping and surveillance, and warrantless arrests for up to 24 days of anyone accused of terrorism by a presidentially-appointed commission, the Anti-Terrorism Council.

The US-based Human Rights Watch stated that the law makes the Anti-Terrorism Council “prosecutor, judge, jury, and jailer.”

The NTF-ELCAC has published a long list of various legal groups which it has labeled as member organizations of the Communist Party of the Philippines. This accusation opens the tens of thousands of members of these organizations to charges of terrorism and the full force of the Anti-Terrorism Act.

In an attempt to whip up public hysteria and support for the witchhunt, tarpaulin banners were printed and displayed throughout Metro Manila denouncing the CPP-NPA-NDF (National Democratic Front) as “persona non grata.”

The Duterte administration has orchestrated a campaign of mass murder over the past four years in the name of its “war on drugs.” The targets of police and paramilitary extrajudicial killings are the poor. There is a nightly body count of victims, often scores of dead. Since Duterte took office nearly 30,000 people have been killed as part of the so-called war on drugs.

The fascistic and police state measures of the Duterte administration have received nearly universal support from the ruling elite. The representatives of the various parties in the legislature have in an unprecedented supermajority repeatedly voted to extend additional powers to the president in support of his authoritarianism.

Duterte’s policies express a trend in the ruling class around the globe to turn to authoritarian forms of rule as a means of suppressing mass unrest in the face of social crisis and explosive levels of inequality.

The various mass organizations now being red-tagged by the Duterte administration—Bayan, Bayan Muna, Gabriela, the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU)—gave their enthusiastic support to him as he took office. The members of these organizations are not secretly members of the Communist Party, despite the lying threats of the NTF-ELCAC. These organizations, however, do share a common political line with the CPP, the program of Stalinism. It was this program, which subordinates workers to the capitalist class in the name of nationalism, that served as the justification for the ties that the CPP established with Duterte.

Representatives of Gabriela and other organizations now red-tagged by the Duterte administration entered the Duterte cabinet in 2016 and proudly proclaimed that Duterte was a “left” and “socialist” president. Luz Ilagan, spokesperson of Gabriela, remains part of the Duterte cabinet where she serves as undersecretary of the Department of Social Welfare and Development. Her immediate supervisor, the secretary of the DSWD, is on the board of NTF-ELCAC.

As the CPP’s relations with the Duterte administration soured in 2017, as a result of a shift in the Duterte administration to a more open reliance on the military, the party began looking to form an alliance with the bourgeois opposition in the Liberal Party (LP), which at present is a small minority in the legislature.

CPP founder and ideological leader, Jose Maria Sison, in early 2020 began issuing public statements calling on the military to withdraw its support from Duterte and install Vice President Leni Robredo, the LP chair, as president.

The escalating red-tagging accusations of the military and the NTF-ELCAC are a vicious response to these coup plots of the CPP. The Duterte administration is attempting to suppress the organization of mass dissent behind its political enemies and to intimidate working people more broadly.

It is impossible for Filipino workers, peasants and youths to defend democracy and human rights on the basis of the political line of the CPP. The organizations now being viciously targeted by NTF-ELCAC played a critical role in propping up Duterte in 2016, depicting him as a progressive figure. The only way forward in opposition to the murderous red-tagging being conducted by the Duterte administration is to break with the political line of the CPP and take up the struggle of the working class for socialism, independent of all factions of the bourgeoisie.